Once again I was down to the last set of cotton loops for a potholder loom. I actually started several patterns gleaned from Pinterest, didn’t like them, and took them apart. Once woven, the knitted cotton loops are quite robust, but if woven and unwoven repeatedly, they have a tendency to unravel. I needed to make a choice and stick to it. I love spirals so decided to tackle a spiral pattern potholder. This was easier decided than done. I did find a picture of a spiral potholder, but couldn’t wrap my head around the sequence of under overs working straight across. I ended up working from the center, slowly adding loops on each side and meticulously tracing the spiral, fixing the woven path as I went.

The key to the spiral is that sometimes loops go over two, rather than one opposing loop. These floats happen at the corners when the color needs to be continuous. The order of loop color is the same for the vertical and horizontal.

I managed the make this whole week a throwback with this series of potholder experiments! The loops are now all gone and the looms have been absorbed into my weaving tool box. I plan to use the pin looms with yarn next. Tomorrow will be an actual throwback post.

When I bought the potholder loom kits for my kids, I bought one regular size and one Pro. The Pro box still had intact seals. I fixed that, and thought I might make a small bag because the Pro potholders are larger and there were only enough loops for two projects. The loom also has an odd number of pins, rather than the even number for the regular loom. It opens up different design possibilities. I wanted to experiment more with twisting with my first project with a Pro loom. I counted all my loops and divided them in half, then came up with a design based on the number I had of each color.

The overall pattern when weaving is three fold: twisted path, plain weave, plain weave.

I was going to make a coordinating but opposite twist design, but it turns out when the strands are twisted the opposite way, the pattern is just being worked upside down, it doesn’t look different. Hm. I don’t want twins, so I’ll try something completely different for the next potholder.

So now that I’ve pinned a couple potholder pictures on Pinterest, my feed is flooded with pin looms covered in cotton loops. I saw a partially woven potholder that had adjacent loops twisted over each other. There were no instructions or guidance, so it took me a bit of experimentation, and I didn’t make an exact replica, but I did enjoy working on a new technique.

I found it easiest to work this pattern from the center. I twisted one strand from each adjacent loop together then ran the weaving loop through the center of the twist. I then twisted the next two strands in the opposite way. It took some mistakes and undoing to get the pattern right. I found if the warm colors were up I probably had the twist right. The next two loops are woven normally for potholders, where the horizontal loop goes over or under both strands of the same vertical loop. After the second pass, the vertical loops are in the original position and I could make another twisted pass. So even though it was challenging to puzzle out, the actual weave technique boils down to three rows: one twisted, two plain.

In the finished weave, the strands aren’t twisted, but rather curve back and forth vertically, which makes an interesting X pattern. As I write this post, I noticed a weaving mistake. Ah well. It is a potholder. I do find that if I leave a pattern for a bit and come back, I’m more likely to spot such errors. I was too eager to cast this one off.